“The Three-Day Blow” takes place in a cabin in rural Michigan in 1916, right as summer is turning into fall. Hemingway subtly establishes aspects of the setting in the first lines of the story:
The rain stopped as Nick turned into the road that went up through the orchard. The fruit had been picked and the fall wind blew through the bare trees. Nick stopped and picked up a Wagner apple from beside the road, shiny in the brown grass from the rain. He put the apple in the pocket of his Mackinaw coat.
Here, Hemingway subtly drops hints at where and when the story takes place—the fact that the apple trees had recently been picked (yet some apples still remain) suggests that it is just the start of fall, and the fact that Nick is wearing a Mackinaw coat places him near the Mackinaw region of Michigan (where the coats originated).
Hemingway similarly communicates the time period in which the story is set in an indirect way when he has Nick and Bill discuss recent events in major league baseball. While drinking in the cabin, they discuss the trade of infielder Heinie Zimmerman (also known as “The Great Zim”) to the New York Giants, an event that took place in August of 1916.
The year 1916 is also significant because it is in the middle of World War I, just before the United States sent troops to Europe. Hemingway wrote “The Three-Day Blow” in 1925 on the other side of the global conflict, and it’s possible that the forthcoming storm in the story symbolizes the looming devastation of war. At the same time, by the end of the story, Nick (the protagonist) is not afraid of the storm, seeing it as creating the opportunity for change or renewal on the other side. It may be that this was Hemingway’s way of communicating an optimistic stance about the effects of war on young people like Nick and Bill—they may be part of the Lost Generation, but not all is lost.
